Getting Along for Birth - Come Find out How!

Are you a doula who is finding it increasingly more difficult to be accepted at hospital births?  A nurse who dreads when a woman in labor says - I have a doula?  Have you ever thought - why can't we all get along?  Well I am here to tell you - we CAN!  Over 15 years I attended births in hospitals all over NJ and PA.  Twenty hospitals in all.  Most were pretty doula friendly - at least enough so that it didn't bother me.  But over the years I also saw that change.  And wondered - why?  What is happening to make it change?  You would think that as the years went on the nurses and docs would see that this benefits women and them as well.

One point I would like to make is when you attend a birth in a hospital setting you are there for the mother and the mother alone - however - you are also going into someone elses "house" so to speak.  What are you doing to be a good guest?  And what are the nurses and doctors doing to be good hosts?  Are we truly doing what is best for the laboring woman or are we running our own agenda?

Are we preparing her to be her own advocate before labor?  Or are we believing that we will rescue her and make it all better for her?  A very wise and sage woman I know once asked in a workshop she was teaching - are you responsible TO the laboring woman or FOR her?  Think about that.  And boy, did I.  My whole way of practicing changed after that - and for the better!  I started teaching women more of how to get what they wanted and needed for their birth.  Truly empowering them to not only seek out what they wanted and whom to go to to get it but also allowing them to be responsible if they did not!

That woman was Polly Perez and in April I will have the honor of co-teaching a CAPPA labor doula workshop with her at Copley Hospital in Morrisville, VT.  We are hoping that doulas and nurses will come together to hear what we have to say - about being a doula and how nurses and doulas can work togehter for the benefit of women!  That my friends is what it is all about.  Hope you can join us but if you can't let us know and maybe we can bring our workshop to your location.